As I parked my chopsticks following the best Japanese meal I’ve enjoyed in or around Edmonton, Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay wafted through my head.

“Why wait any longer for the one you love,” bleated Bob, “when he’s standing in front of you.”

OK, this is about food, not relationships. But Joe Chen has run Sumo Sumo Sushi Bar & Grill in Sherwood Park since 2002. It’s only now that the new, improved and much bigger Sumo Sumo is being discovered by those living outside The Park.

I experienced high anxiety on arrival at the “new” (it’s almost two years old) Sumo Sumo, around the corner from Millennium Place on Lakeland Boulevard. It looked like a Japanese version of one of those suburban, mass production restaurants where the food comes frozen from Texas. Plus it was a Friday evening with a line-up and a 35 minute wait for a table. It turned out reservations could have been made by phone, which the website didn’t mention.

So I didn’t start in the best of moods. This anonymous reviewer stuff has its disadvantages.

But as the food came to our table within 15 minutes of ordering, nothing but pleasant surprise followed pleasant surprise.

Sumo Sumo is offering “fusion” at its best – Japanese-based sushi cuisine with a deep understanding of contemporary North American health and food trends.

The seafood is as fresh as you’ll find in or around Edmonton, it’s bountiful, and considering its quality and quantity, fantastically priced. Four big dishes – Mackenzier rolls, samurai rolls, ahi tuna salad and a California sushi “pizza” – came to a total of $49.50 or $16 each.

In most sushi places, an ahi tuna “salad” would feature the tuna, with a bit of greens.

Not at Sumo Sumo. The tuna was nothing short of magnificent - eight thick generous slices, four on each side of the plate, seared for a few seconds for a slight smoked flavour, edged with pepper. In between was a giant mound of salad with greens, chunks of mango, avacado, red onion and mandarin orange in an excellent light ginger dressing. The interplay of the tuna and the salad was sublime.

The eight big pieces of samurai roll were remarkable for the depth and breadth of rolled-in ingredients. Warm crunch came from the tempura shrimp, crabmeat and scallop, coolness from a delicious smoked salmon, fruit from mango, softness from avocado, and, within the roll again, a flavour top up of masago (roe-egg) mayo and a sweet kitchen-made chili sauce.

The California “pizza” was a whole lotta fun – a “dough” consisting of a deep-fried sticky rice disc (delicious, somehow not oily) topped with a generous portion of fresh crab meat, more avocado, greens and sliced cherry tomatoes on top. How often is a novelty dish visually appealing and delicious to boot?

The “Mackenzie” roll, a special of the evening, was tasty enough, but not in the same league as the other three dishes: A tad too heavy, a little too dense, a little too sweet.

Even the drinks are better at Sumo Sumo. Most bubble teas seem to have an industrial edge. Not here. A Sumo colada bubble tea with milk, pineapple and coconut tasted almost as if the fruit had been plucked off the tree that afternoon, the milk fresh from a cow across the road.

In menu choice and presentation, within its fusion personality, Sumo Sumo seems to effortlessly win over those who at first may be squeamish about raw or fast-seared fish. There were, for instance, lots of families on Friday.

It’s all the more remarkable, given this is a big restaurant, with several sections, a sushi counter and a stand-up bar.

Finally … great seafood in Edmonton. Under our noses in Sherwood Park since 2002!

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Congratulations to Premier Rachel Notley for her part – acknowledged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – in securing federal approval for doubling the oil-carrying capacity of both the Trans Mountain pipeline to the west coast, and Enbridge’s Line 3 to the American midwest.